There can be no doubt over James Bond’s fate at the end of No Time to Die, because not even the indestructible 007 can survive being bombed to oblivion by a cavalcade of missiles, sending Daniel Craig out in a literal blaze of glory and heroic sacrifice.
The final scene of the movie is an altogether different matter, though, one that’s left deliberately ambiguous. If this was any other franchise we were talking about, you’d expect rumors of a spinoff following Léa Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann to be making the rounds, touting a thriller revolving around Bond’s love trying to keep their daughter safe as his enemies continue their quest for vengeance.
This particular saga doesn’t do spinoffs, as has been made perfectly clear, so it was left to director Cary Joji Fukunaga to clear things up in an interview with Empire.
“It felt like closure, like closing off the past, and closing off the story. It’s that last sentence in a paragraph in the last chapter of a book, just to try to make it feel satisfying.”
The last shot was reminiscent of the iconic gun barrel opening, and provided a fitting way with which to end Craig’s five-film stint as the character. No era of Bond has ever leaned so hard into continuity and connectivity as the arc that began with Casino Royale and ended with No Time to Die, so it was important for Fukunaga to draw a definitive line under this particular iteration.
